Other Help Topics :: Swap file instead of swap partition?

Thanks for your latest reply, Brian.

It's said, though I think apocryphally, that George Bernard Shaw, who was big on spelling reform, gave as one example of the need for it, the so-called word "ghoti": "gh" as in cough, "o" as in women and "ti" as in nation. Or in other words, "fish".

I understand from you that I can run extensions from hda1, but your reference to "grub" made me realise I hadn't really explained what I'm on about here. I'm not trying to get this computer to dual-boot. My idea is that if it's started with the DSL live cd in the drive, then it'll be a Linux computer and if it's started without, then it'll be a Windows computer. I really only expect it to be started with the cd in, but must leave the Windows stuff alone, because the computer owner thinks that he may just want to look at it again some day, though the last time he looked at it was
about 2000. I'm trying, just for the challenge, to make the thing useful for the owner's son as a Web browsing appliance.

Thanks again for your help,

Leslie

DSL reads and writes to FAT formatted drives with no problem. You might make a hidden folder in Windows by the "hidden" box in it's properties(because it will still be visible to DSL) and use that to store your backup.tar.gz file as well as any extentions. You can load the extentions or apps automatically, I believe, at bootup with the live CD with the cheat code myDSL=hda1, but then the apps need to be in the top directory of the drive. YOu can also do, as you said, use the free space on the drive to make swap and storage partitions. If you make them Linux partitions, Windows 98 won't even know they are there! In other words, unless your friend also boots from a liveCD, then he will never know that the other partitions exist.

Thanks very much for those suggestions, doobit. They would help make it less likely that the computer owner, if he ever did use the computer again, would accidentally do something to disarrange the DSL things I've already put on the drive, the backup.tar.gz and swap files, and anything else I put there in the future.

I think that, at least at first, I'll see if I can effectively do what you suggest by just hiding the files themselves using an option in Windows, instead of putting them in a hidden folder. That'd avoid any problem about DSL wanting its files to be in the top directory.

Thanks again,

Leslie

original here.